Angela Sage Larsen's Blog, page 9

Say yes to being a smart girl

I learned a little something from the Seven Dwarfs today, and no, I don't have an evil stepmother. In a phone conversation with my dad, we were talking about job interviews and how much they've changed over the years. A while ago, he'd taken a leadership workshop through Disney and the instructor pointed out that the Disney job applications asked the question, "What are the names of the Seven Dwarfs?" In the room where applicants came in droves to apply for work, the names of the Dwarfs were painted around the walls. The test was to determine how observant the applicants were. I laughed when my dad mentioned this and responded, "I probably would have looked up, seen the names, quickly looked away and then not written down the names because I didn't want to cheat!"


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I totally don't have permission to use this picture of the Seven Dwarfs. But can we all safely assume this is the intellectual property of Walt Disney & Co?

Well, there's clearly a difference between cheating and accepting something when it's given to you. I guess I'm still learning how to accept good, even when it's right in front of my face. Sometimes, instead of accepting the real deal (or working for it), I settle for a cheap imitation. I'm not the only one. Every time a girl settles on her worth based on her looks, she's selling herself short. Every time we judge a girl (or boy, or man or woman) by their looks, we're selling ourselves short. Think of all the good we could accomplish if we took some of the energy sucked up in trying to look like–and judge others by–the cover of a magazine and put it toward making a productive contribution. When we accept our worth, we are buoyed – confident, kind, generous.

I'm learning to accept my worth, say yes to the good that I am and do, and not just look. May all of us be willing to look up and see Bashful, Doc, Dopey, Grumpy, Happy, Sneezy, Sleepy…and write it down without guilt or apology when asked!

Miss Representation

I'm so excited about this documentary (which was picked up by Oprah when it aired at Sundance), Miss Representation.

Newest Miss Representation Trailer (2011 Sundance Film Festival Official Selection) from Miss Representation on Vimeo.

The trailer alone is enough to make you wanna grab your poster paints, craft a splashy banner, and take to the streets demanding a change for our girls. [Please understand that when I talk about empowering girls, I'm not at all suggested emasculating boys. Just the opposite. When we empower girls, we empower boys; raising our standards for all can only result in universal blessings. *Drops mic and steps off soapbox*] According to the film's official website, "The film accumulates startling facts and statistics that leave audiences shaken, armed with a new perspective, and asking the question, 'What can we do?'"

The timing could not be more perfect. Just when "Bikini Season" is over, we have Halloween to contend with, where a majority of the costumes marketed to little girls are too sexy even for adults. As Peggy Orenstein, the author of "Cinderella Ate My Daughter" says in her blog, "the problem is not Halloween. It's not Toddlers & Tiaras. It's the messaging that surrounds girls in much more mundane ways EVERY SINGLE DAY that reduce them and define them by their bodies."

The other reason the airing of Miss Rep is so timely is because it falls right in the middle of national Teen Read Week, when I will be giving several workshops for teens and tweens on finding your own voice and writing strong characters.

I hope you'll watch Miss Representation; get everyone you know together and have a party. I know I'm going to! I have a feeling I'll be on blog overload at that point with so much to say! It will be that much more inspiration for me to create strong female (and truly strong male) characters for readers to enjoy and celebrate; join me in person or by Ustream for my workshop and start filling the world with images and characters that inspire, empower, and encourage!

PS – When you visit Miss Representation, be sure to take the pledge!

When life hands you marshmallow fluff, make fudge

I thought you'd get a kick out of my latest Fifties Chix video, wherein I made Mamie's Million Dollar Fudge. The recipe is in my new book, Travel to Tomorrow. My grandpa ("Boompa") is a retired engineer (which is like a "retired" Marine; once a Marine, always a Marine). He read my Fifties Chix book cover to cover and dutifully made the fudge. He called from where he lives in California to tell us how it went (it was delicious and it made 100 pieces) and asked if I'd made it yet. Slightly embarrassed, I admitted I hadn't. I figured I'd better get on it before I sold millions of books and had to admit to readers that I hadn't tasted the fudge, much less made it! Making this video reminds me of how I cook for company: I almost always make something new and experimental. Whit always asks if I'm "sure" I want to try a new recipe on guests. Kinda like including a recipe in a book before you try the recipe, you mean? Yeah, sounds fun!

smart before self, bloom before doom, substance before stuff!

Cute sign they made for my visit

Over the weekend I got to participate in yet another Scholastic Book Fair selling Petalwink books and for the first time, Fifties Chix (Travel to Tomorrow) books. It was blast! I spend so much time in front of my computer either writing or researching my stories OR arranging book signings and working on marketing stuff, that it was like breathing clean cool air to be surrounded by k-8th graders for four days. Seeing their response to Fifties Chix was particularly heartening. There were at least three kids who ran over to show their friends T2T and said, "This is the best book. I mean, I haven't read it yet, but I love it."(And then they bought it and so did their friends. I really do hope they love it. Yikes with the pressure!)

I had given my "Finding Your True Voice" creative writing/character development workshop (a slightly down-sized version) to the 5th and 6th graders at that school. One of the exercises we did was thinking about what their story's protagonist sees when they look at themselves in the mirror. (It was nearly unanimous across 200 kids that what we see when we look at ourselves in the mirror is not what other people see when they look at us.) I asked what a pop-star sees when they look at themselves in the mirror (the comments were none too flattering, let me tell you); then I asked what Mother Theresa sees when she looks at herself in the mirror. It was interesting, because about her they spoke in terms of qualities; not one person said what she looked like (older, short, dark hair, etc). The best response was that when she looked in the mirror, she saw "the child of God." Yeah, I had to take a moment there. I had such an inspiring time with them!

I'll be making that  "Finding Your True Voice" workshop universal when I give it at 2 libraries this month-where it will also be filmed and webcast live on Ustream. Sign up today to participate at the libraries if you're in St. Louis area or come see me on the web and join the growing movement of kids who put smart before self, bloom before doom, substance before stuff!

Message Received, Universe

Do you ever feel like the universe is trying to get you to pay attention to something…and it's being really loud and obvious about it? I used to have much different response to the story of Moses and the burning bush than I do now; I once looked at the story very solemnly–now it makes me laugh with recognition. I totally get it. How many burning bushes does it take to get us (read: me) to "now turn aside, and see this great sight"? My friend Phebe once asked, "I wonder how many times he'd passed that bush? Maybe that was just the first time he noticed it?"

I've had [another/ongoing] burning bush experience, my friends, and good things are coming. If you've visited before, you probably noticed that my site has already been tweaked…there's plenty more of that as part of my Plan [ie, my turning aside to see this great SITE. Ha! No seriously, I am not making light of this. LIGHT! Ha! OK, time to refocus…)

Anyway, at the very moment I'd been giving some serious thought to my "WHY"–writing for girls, writing focused on character, contributing something substantial and positive to the world of books for kids--this article about the Disney Princess effect on girls in today's "highly sexualized environment"  arrived in the mail. I can't stop thinking about it and it is my why. There is a whole movement underway to save girlhood, support girls, "redefine girly," empower girls to think and be strong, bold, smart…basically to not hide from being a girl because GIRLS ARE NECESSARY; they hold up half the sky, after all.

This is all just a long, wordy way of saying…change is a comin', starting with the focus of my blog. Look for the launch of my new campaign coming soon!

Young Adult

I love this genre because the "young" want to be adults and the adults want to be "young." It's a win-win. I still don't feel like an adult, and I'm sure many other "adults" don't either. I think the fact that I have a husband and a mortgage is rather incredulous. I still feel things as strongly as I did when I was 16 (even though when I was 16, I was convinced my youthful fervency would die and that was the real tragedy of the universe: that we all grow up. But I still listen to loud music, am madly in love with the cutest boy on the block–my husband, that is, just to clarify–and desperately want to change the world. And eat candy for dinner.).

In light of the wonder of being and experiencing young adulthood, there are a number of "essential" YA books in my opinion. Here are a few lists:

NPR Books recently listed these five as must-reads (they called them Teen Novels for Readers of All Ages):

Flip
Delirium
Ten Miles Past Normal
Trapped
Karma

The Today show recently listed "10 Books You Really Should Have Read in High School"

Frankenstein
The Scarlett Letter
The Catcher in the Rye
The Great Gatsby
Pride and Prejudice
Siddhartha
Lord of the Flies
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
To Kill a Mockingbird
The Fountainhead

YALSA has a list up on which to vote (25) here.

My list is:

To Kill a Mockingbird
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
The Hunger Games trilogy
Hemingway (not YA, but I think young/adults must read his stuff)
Before I Fall
The Outsiders
Delirium
Divergent

There are oh-so-many more, but this gives you an idea of my influences and is a great place to start. What do you think are must reads for young/adults?

What are you making public?

I taught a class this summer called "How to publish your own book." Two things: 1) I LOVED teaching!! I did not expect to fall head over heels with it like I did. If you've been to one of my talks or story times, you know I enjoy public speaking, so I guess it would naturally follow that I loved being in a classroom and sharing what I love and learning along with every one else. 2) The theme of the class is the theme of my life– "publish" means make public and so every day we asked each other in class, "what are you making public?"

an image from Philippa Lawrence's Bound project

If you are a writer (or artist, musician, actor, etc), you may have noticed that it can seem like an uphill battle to make a "living" with your craft. But we creatives know that life is saturated with the craft, not something to be tucked away when you have time, or when it is convenient (ha!) to pursue. Hence the question, "what are you making public?" I have found that I have to live my craft, live my message 24/7…then the leap to "publishing" isn't a leap at all; it's just another step in the creative process.

My neighbor and good friend Michele sent me the link to this article that Kathryn Stockett wrote about getting her amazing book The Help published. Rather, the article is about the fact that she was rejected 60 times. Sixty. Six times ten. On my Goodreads account, I created a bookshelf called "Books I wish I'd written" and The Help is at the top of my list. When I read the book last summer and looked at Ms. Stockett's bio, I was annoyed. She's from the south and works in NYC. Surprise, surprise, I muttered to myself, thinking she had some inside pampered track and no wonder she was published (besides that irritating little detail that the book was excellent). [Also, I think that writers from the South have an unfair advantage. I mean, I grew up on the West Coast where the weather was mild and people were intellectual. People in the South have crazy stories and don't have to look far for unique characters, charming backwater towns and entertaining plot lines. But I digress]…My point is that Ms. Stockett was not at all a pampered writer: she was obsessed with her book and her characters. She lived with them night and day, internalizing them (sneaking off with them, as you will see from her article) and this basically means living them.

Please, I am begging you, do not give up if you are looking to be published. Live your message, live your passion; make it public in who you are. And be open to the "non"-traditional ways of publishing. If you are hankering after The Big Six (Random House

Penguin, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, Hachette Book Group, Macmillan), you need to know:

7 out of 10 books printed by the Big 6 lose money
10% of their titles generate 90% of their revenue
Big 6 have big overhead in the Big Apple

This publishing model cannot be maintained, as we all know and are seeing before our very eyes every day. Believe me, there's nothing wrong with being published by these publishers and I read their books (I also read small-press books and self-published books); I'm just saying, if you aren't published by the Big 6, that's no reason to give up. For starters, you can consider this new, easy, most viable publishing option.

And…Keep going. And live your passion. You're publishing your message every day with every interaction and every thought you make public!

On Mini-Vacations and Grand-Scale Salvation

When I laid down to go to sleep at night,  I could feel the lake rocking me to sleep. Torch Lake, that is, the "third most beautiful lake in the world"–or so we all kept quoting a National Geographic statistic (I haven't Googled it, but I believe it. Caribbean blue green, sandy bottom. Divine). Yes, Whit and I went on our first vacation in several years. We joined his two sisters and their families and his parents in  a huge house in Northern Michigan on a sliver of land between Lake Michigan and Torch Lake.

Torch Lake Sunrise my first morning of vacation!

I'm not as experienced with traditional vacations but I take mini-vacations every day: in the shower, early in the morning (assuming I get up early in the morning . . . ), on a long walk. These are all situations where I can let my mind wander, absorb, reflect. That first day at Torch Lake (got up to see the day dawn, as the picture above proves!), I inserted myself into that glorious landscape and disappeared. I didn't fade to nothing or cease to exist; instead it felt like I expanded to become one with nature. All burdens to do with self dissipated and what was left of me was sky, lake, trees. Talk about room to think. That's all I want from vacation . . . room to think and be.

Here's me "thinking" and "being" ie, painting the sunrise

I do my best thinking in the shower, my best writing on an airplane and my best being in nature. (In the shower, I can't tweet, take calls or check Facebook; on an plane ride from STL to Denver is where I wrote the first–which turned out to be the second–Petalwink book.) Though our time at the lake was only four days (it could have been seven if we didn't spend 3 days driving . . . but Whit and I had some awesome conversations on our road trip, so it was good), the glow of that time is reaching out every direction and touching my days before and after golden; I learned a lot that I will take with me (and blog about as it distills).

In the Bible, one of the definitions of "salvation" is to bring into a wide open space. So to me, my vacations are wide open mental spaces where thoughts are free to come and go, expand and progress in a spontaneous carefree rhythm, to serve and reflect the greater good. This is not frivolous, it is essential. Michelangelo said 75% of his work was thinking. Just imagine how glorious his thoughts if David was only 25% of his work! How happy am I that "behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation [vacation]." As Mary Baker Eddy so graphically articulates it, ". . . for you make radiant room midst the glories of one endless day."

Radiant room for me and my guy

First Flights and Other Wonders

Here's Daisy enjoying a video of baby robins leaving their nest.

On Saturday we had way above average summer weather. Low humidity (read: less than 60%), perfect temps (80s) and blue sky set off by puffy, non-ominous white clouds. The hubby and I were hanging out on the patio, getting ready to go for a walk with Daisy H. Larsen the Dog, when a robin crash landed in a flower pot a few feet away. He shook his head and blinked at us, like, "What just happened? Did you see that?"

We realized we had just watched him take his first flight from his nest in the Bradford Pear in the corner of our yard. He was little for a robin (but bigger than the chicks we saw in the nest who could barely hold their tiny necks up for worms to be stuffed down them). He had bedhead and cute little gray and white polka dots, like a new driver has a sign on the car.

Whit and I watched, breathless, as he gathered himself for his second flight. You know how you learn a new card game and the first hand you play you beat everyone at the table like a whiz? And then you play the second round with uber confidence, only to come in dead last? That's what happened to little mister. He fluffed himself up and took off, but about 15 feet in, his altitude dipped severely and then he was over the street, crash landing on his chest. Ouch. He hopped the rest of the way to the curb (smart bird) and sat under a tree.

Every thing in me wanted to rush to him, tell him it's OK and try to help him fly and/or give him landing lessons. Right away a couple things occurred to me:

He's a bird. I am not a bird (I do not eat worms and my legs are way too big).
His parents, who are birds, let him fly away on his own and were nowhere to be found to offer him treats, rewards, words of encouragement, aid or pity.

Rockin Robin did get his act together and we witnessed his 3rd and 4th flights (shorter jaunts and landing a little higher up). I suddenly thought of his siblings, and all the other baby birds learning to fly all around the world [who also didn't need me. And evidently this has been going on for millennia without my aid. Strange].

It was cool to see this phenomena in person, as I had been recently sent this video about robins hatching, eating, growing and leaving their nest. You'll love it; check it out here.

Thinking about Rockin Robin and his siblings inevitably led to my thinking about the baby birds in my experience: my books, my personal growth, my relationships. All the things that I am so tempted to coddle and suffocate (and basically keep grounded) because I'm not trusting that they are designed to fly. Like Mom and Pops Robin, I've fed, nurtured, loved and provided a good home base, but ultimately, they aren't mine to personally keep.

Yesterday was not my favorite day for a bunch of reasons that I won't get into, but suffice it to say, I felt like I had bedhead and crash landed in the middle of the street one time too many. I could not stop thinking about that baby robin and how I just knew that he was going to be OK; he was meant to fly and I had the pleasure of witnessing a simple wonder of nature without putting my grubby hands on it. So today I'm letting all the good that's natural in my life take wing and soar. I'm trusting Nature, God, to take care of all my little nestlings.

My Interview with Novel Novice

I love that Novel Novice has a middle grade reviewer…who is a middle grader!! So smart. Adorable Elena interviewed me about Fifties Chix (have you got your copy of Travel to Tomorrow yet? It's the perf summer read if I do say so myself. Actually, Elena reviewed it, too, and liked it!). Check out the video and transcript of the interview between Elena and me. She asked some great questions; coupla those gave me pause. Enjoy! Thanks, Elena & Novel Novice!